


Occupied Spaces

by Nautilusopus



Series: Meddling Kids [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: A prequel of sorts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Consensual Possession, ESP, Foster Care, Gen, Ghost Hunters, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, I gotta set at least ONE of these things in Maine right, Mediums, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 23:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21187748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: Places the world has forgotten make themselves known, in one way or another. Cloud stays to listen.(Written for FFVII Halloween Week: Day 1 - Scary Stories)





	Occupied Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so I cheated a little on this one. This is part of an early draft/prequel that I scrapped of an upcoming fic that also technically happens to have a haunted house in it. Whatever.
> 
> Now you know what was delaying updates for so long!

The first time it's an accident, and Cloud isn't even really sure what's happened at first until quite a while afterwards.

He's _seen_ them for years -- long enough to understand that he shouldn't bring them up in polite company. When he'd been younger and stupider, he'd claimed to see his mother once, and that had gotten him landed in therapy for the next year and a half. So, he keeps his distance, they keep theirs. Pretends he can't see them, so they'll leave him be. Accepts he's probably not all there in the head. But this... this is the closest one's ever been.

It's Zack's fault, too, like most things are. If anyone would convince Cloud to break into some old abandoned duplex in the middle of the night, it'd be him. He would've greatly preferred to stay home on a night this cold with a mug of cocoa and whatever video he'd rented from the library that week, and _not_ just because his foster mom would have killed him if she knew he'd snuck out. He'd just moved to Scarborough from his last foster home in Portland a month ago, and it wasn't as though he knew the area all that well either.

It was really hard to say no to Zack, though -- Cloud had never exactly been the social type (though not for lack of trying), and Zack was about the only person in town that had bothered to talk to him. Not to mention... Zack was tall. There was always a little part of him that kept painfully aware of the fact that he could hurt Cloud very badly if he wanted to. He didn't _seem_ like the type, but why tempt fate?

The floors are old and rotted, and he backs into Zack a little too quickly before stumbling and falling to his knees, scraping his hand open on a bit of shattered tile as he tries to break his fall, little pinpricks of blood oozing their way to the surface.

"Sorry," he whispers. Zack just grins and rolls his eyes, and he can't be certain if he's done that on purpose or not. He wouldn't, right?

He's so busy at first expecting Zack to slam a door in his face or scream to mess with him that he doesn't notice he's been gradually growing colder and colder over the last ten minutes, and that he's made it all the way into the basement without even realising it.

He can hear a voice, too -- what sounds like a young girl giggling excitedly, urging him onwards, and he realises soon after he can't move at all. He's been reduced to a passenger in his own skin as he shimmies his way between broken, rotted wood and mildewed papers, and he's so, so cold, the chilly autumn air akin to a warm summer breeze against his own icy skin.

But strangely enough, he isn't afraid. In fact, the apprehension he felt breaking into a condemned building like this is gone entirely. All he feels beyond the cold is a sense of familiarity, coupled with a deep, permeating loneliness.

He feels himself walk directly to a cabinet in the back of the room and push it aside purposefully, feeling for a loose floorboard that he lifts with shaking hands. He reaches in slowly and brushes away cobwebs and dirt and dead bugs before removing an old porcelain doll, its painted face missing an eye and the blush on one of its cheeks. He feels himself smile, scooching himself away from the hole he's created, and he sits there as the sensation slowly returns to his fingers.

He finds he can move again, and he looks up to see a girl, maybe seven or eight years old, sitting across from him. She wears a plain cloth dress, torn and soaked with red, her hair tightly braided down the back of her scalp, and she stares at him with inquisitive hazel eyes.

The fear still doesn't come, though he thinks in the back of his head that it probably should. She continues to look at Cloud expectantly, and he offers her the doll he's holding.

"Is this yours?" he asks. The girl nods and takes it from him, offering a shy smile.

"What's her name?"

"Carlotta," says the girl, or perhaps he just imagines she says it. "I'm Paige. Thank you for finding us."

"You're welcome," he says, though he's not quite sure what she's thanking him for. He never gets a chance to ask. He blinks, and she's gone along with the doll.

He feels eyes on the back of his head, then, and he turns around to see Zack gaping at him.

"You alright, dude?"

"I -- yeah." He isn't really sure how he got down here. How long has it been?

"You kinda zoned out," says Zack. He looks unsettled. "You feeling alright?"

"...I did?"

"...Alright, real funny, asshole," says Zack, rolling his eyes as the lopsided grin returns to his face. "C'mon. The upstairs bedroom's supposed to be where all the ghost shit happens."

_I wouldn't know about that,_ Cloud wants to say, but he follows him up the stairs anyway.

* * *

He starts spending a lot of time in old places. Condemned buildings, museums near closing time, deeper parts of the woods. He gets tired of pricking his thumb and buys a blood vial pendant kit from a cheap occult shop online -- it's how they find him, he realises eventually, and at the very least it's easier to manage than perpetually bruised fingers.

The fear never really comes. He gets a little apprehensive at first, just from being on his own in the dark in a part of town he doesn't know very well. But then they start to appear, too, and he isn't alone anymore. And they know the town better than he ever could have, are more at home in these places than he could ever hope to be. His skin grows cold enough for a thin dusting of frost to coat it by the time he's done in the colder months, but they seem as eager for company and conversation as he does, and the hours lead him through old stories and forgotten rooms and buried secrets one after the other.

One tells him about the way his son would build model planes out of just about anything, as Cloud feels his hands lovingly turn old rotted wood over. Another says she's always wanted to write a book, even though it isn't a proper occupation for a lady, and he sits there in the dark with what would have been his algebra and history notebooks and fills them with a manuscript in unfamiliar handwriting, which he saves to publish one day if he can come up with a good enough explanation for why he has it. One has him jump into the ocean, swimming out to a sandbar where his family had drowned before they had a chance to be sold, and he sits there with clammy, waterlogged bodies pressed up against them before they all disappear together.

On occasion they don't have much to say at all -- some just want to feel the warmth of the sun on their skin one last time before they move on, and he sits there for hours watching the sky go from deep blue to pale grey before it splits with soft pinks and finally brilliant oranges and reds. After a while, he doesn't even really feel the cold anymore, either.

_They _aren't what he's afraid of. He runs away from home when things get a little warmer. The living have given him much more reason to be afraid than the dead ever have. And he still can't tell anyone -- not his foster family, not his friends, not Zack. 

He doesn't even really have proof if Zack asks for it -- at least not any he'd accept. Not for anyone. 

So he runs. The world never looks back. The dead are waiting in every alleyway, as welcoming as ever, each one as full of stories as the next. 

Eventually, he learns what he needs to do.

* * *

Painted -- not even spray-painted, but painted neatly with a brush on a brick wall in a back alley in blue and white paint, is a message. It looks like it's been there for about five or six years now, but nobody really knows for sure how long exactly, given no one even noticed it right away. It became a local meme for a few years, and then an urban legend, and now just another bizarre landmarks in a large city full of equally bizarre landmarks. No one's quite sure what it means, but it's fun to guess. With a group, anyway. No one really wants to be in that alley by themselves.

**UNFAIR PARTINGS? LOST TIME? MISPLACED ITEMS? UNFINISHED BUSINESS? **

**FIND ME!**

Underneath is an old, rust brown handprint that never seems to wash off, no matter how much it rains.


End file.
